School Visits

The Little Shop of Physics Traveling Science Experience visits many schools throughout Colorado and neighboring states each year. Our program is suitable for all ages from Pre-K to Grey! We have also worked with community groups, universities, and anyone else who would benefit from what we offer. When we visit, we like to see as many students as the time and scheduling allows. All of our projects are made with the express purpose of being investigated by children as young as preschoolers but still of interest to those with a more mature scientific mind. Our projects are divided into two categories, those made for the daylight and those that are best seen in the dark—so we typically set up shop in two different rooms or areas.

Hosting a Traveling Science Experience Visit

The most important thing we need to coordinate a school visit is an enthusiastic contact willing to host us at your school. This person is typically a teacher or administrator, though we have had members of the PTO act as a contact. The important thing is to have someone at the school to arrange for rooms, scheduling, tables, lunches, and all of the other things we need for a visit.

Traveling Science Experience Visit Details

Once we have a visit scheduled, we can coordinate with you. But our needs are pretty simple, really. To make it all go, we need:

A Contact Person or Persons

Someone at the school who invites us to present and coordinates all of these logistical details.

Rooms

Generally we set up two different rooms, a “Dark Room” and a “Light Room”. The type of room is flexible; we have used classrooms, labs, gyms and other spaces. However, there must be access to electrical outlets. Additionally the Dark Room needs to be made dark for experiments that require low light levels (for instance holograms and glow-in-the-dark experiments). The Light Room can be lit as it is normally used.

Tables or Desks

We need surfaces to set up our experiments. Many different configurations will work: rectangular tables, student desks, round tables or even lab counters. We typically use the equivalent of approximately 12 tables per room (24 tables total) for all of our experiments.

A Schedule

The schedule should include times, the grade level and the number of students that will be visiting Little Shop. We typically see groups of students for 45 minutes to and hour at a time, depending on the age level. Typically we see groups of up to about 100 students at one time, but can see more depending on the size of the rooms and the amount of supervision you are able to provide. Large groups are often split in two, one starting in each room and switching half way through the period.

Lunch

We ask that you provide the crew (approximately 5-8 people) with lunch and a lunch break in the schedule. We are more than happy to eat with the kids in the school cafeteria if that works best for you.

Supervision

We ask that teachers remain with their classes to help supervise. For large classes it may also be useful to have parent volunteers assist with supervision.

School Visit Overview Video

This video provides a good feel for what is involved in a Little Shop of Physics Traveling Science Experience visit. It is a few years old, and some of the details are not the same. For instance, we can accommodate large groups of over 100 students at a time if the rooms are large enough and you can provide adequate adult supervision.

Request Traveling Science Experience

The Traveling Science Experience 2018/2019 calendar has been filled. To request us for a school visit in 2019/2020 academic year, please fill out this form. We receive more visitation requests in a year than we are able to accommodate, and we cannot guarantee that we will be able to schedule a visit with your school during the upcoming year. We take many factors into account when deciding which school to visit including the number of students we are able to reach, the socioeconomic status of the population and the number of years since the last time we visited. We will be putting together our schedule in May 2019 for the 2019/2020 academic year.

What Does It Cost?

Little Shop of Physics is based out of Colorado State University and is funded through grants and donations. There is no formal charge for our program. However, donations are always appreciated. It costs approximately $1,000 for us to visit a school. Please see our How to Help page for more information on making a donation.